1. Field of the Invention
This invention pertains to electronic monitoring of heavy equipment used in construction and mining and more particularly pertains to a data acquisition system that monitors several physical parameters of a heavy equipment vehicle, including payload weight, and displays the information for an operator, and stores the information to memory for later analysis of vehicle and operator efficiency and for vehicle diagnostics.
2. Description of the Related Art
Nearly all vehicles use sensors and instrumentation to monitor and display vehicle performance. Automobiles typically have real-time instrumentation for displaying vehicle speed, fuel level, and a plurality of warning lights that will illuminate if the engine exceeds certain predetermined physical parameters such as excessive engine heat or insufficient battery voltage.
A manufacturer of large diesel engines provides an electronic diesel control system which senses various diesel engine parameters such as throttle position, RPM, fuel consumption, barometric pressure, and fuel temperature. The electronic control system provides an electronic output from the sensors onto an industry standard bus known as a J1708 bus. Although the electronic control system provides sensor output for many aspects of the engine performance there is no provision for saving the data values of the sensors for later analysis nor is there any suggestion for providing other sensors to monitor physical parameters of the heavy equipment other than the engine.
Heavy equipment vehicles have a hydraulic system for articulating a dump body or loading bucket, knowledge of which is important to maintaining efficiency of the heavy equipment. Additional vehicle information includes distance traveled, rate of travel, payload carried, and time of operation. As such vehicles become more expensive and mining operations become more difficult, the need for improved information of the entire vehicle becomes more important.
Thus, there is a compelling need in the industry for a computer monitoring system for monitoring power-train and vehicle performance information that relates to the operation and efficiency of load-carrying vehicles in which the information is displayed for an operator and saved in memory for later use in diagnostics and efficiency calculations.